Islamic Jihad won’t let Palestine inmates be preys of Israel

Palestinians hold a demonstration in solidarity with children in Israeli jails outside the UN offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah, November 7, 2016. (Photo by AP)

Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement Islamic Jihad has warned Israel that it will not remain indifferent to the mistreatment and abuse of the Palestinians languishing in the regime’s prisons.

On Sunday, the movement organized a sit-in at the Erez border crossing in the north of the enclave in protest at what it denounced as the regime’s unjust imprisonment of Palestinians and its prolongation of their detention periods under unwarrantable pretexts, Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported.

Addressing the event, resistance leader Daoud Shihab warned Israel against “manipulating Palestinian prisoners’ lives” and cautioned the regime’s courts against issuing rulings, which could result in their deaths.

“The Erez checkpoint is the closest point separating us from our occupied lands, and we will not leave our prisoners to be preys of the Israel Prison Service (IPS) and Israeli court practices which kill and execute them,” he asserted.

He also lashed out at Israel’s policy of administrative detention, under which Tel Aviv has been detaining “suspects” without charge or trial and based on evidence, which it claims it can withhold for “security” concerns. Detention, in line with the controversial method, is also indefinitely renewable.

Palestinians hold photos of family members held in Israeli prisoners during a protest on Palestinian Prisoner Day in Ramallah, Israel-occupied West Bank. (File photo)

Shihab said the method seeks “to break down the Palestinian people’s determination, but that Palestinians would not be broken nor defeated,” Ma’an wrote.

The sit-in protest was held amid reports that two hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, who have been refusing food for over 60 days, are now in a dire condition.

Tel Aviv is reported to be holding some 7,000 Palestinians in its prisons across the occupied territories.

Some 720 of the inmates are being held in administrative detention. Scores have also launched hunger strikes in the past year amid threats by prison authorities to feed them forcibly.